Oakland County Coronavirus Data Leaked

OAKLAND COUNTY, MI — Internal data related to the coronavirus used by the Oakland County Health Division was leaked Tuesday evening and into Wednesday morning, according to county officials.

The data, which included information related to the county's positive cases such as the gender, race, age, address and mortality status of patients, was leaked at about 7 p.m. Tuesday and secured by 8 a.m. Wednesday, officials said. The information was shared on the WeChat application.

The data leakage was of a non-public map that was unintentionally marked as public during a recent upload, officials said. The leak did not include name, social security number, or any other health information. The dashboard and the county map at OakGov.com were also not part of this incident.

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“Information security, especially around data critical to Health Division’s analysis during this pandemic, is of vital importance to the IT Department,” said Mike Timm, Oakland County’s director of Information Technology. “We are taking additional precautions going forward including no longer sharing internal GIS data by link but rather within our own private environment.”

From the investigation, the individual access to the GIS URL appears to be limited to fewer than 100 WeChat users based on a test run by the IT Department, although some of those may also be duplicates. There is no evidence that this URL was shared outside of WeChat and it is no longer available in that application.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has been informed of the incident by the Health Division.

“We are grateful to the WeChat users who reported the inappropriate use of this information to our department immediately,” Timm said.

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